Summary

Police released few new details Wednesday about the officer’s fatal shooting of the man, but the Police Department said in a statement that a witness told investigators that the suspect raised a semi-automatic gun at an officer before being shot.

The man has not been identified by the office of Orleans Parish Coroner Jeffrey Rouse. A spokesman for the office said more information would be released after an autopsy Thursday morning.

The shooting came at the end of an investigation into at least three armed robberies over the past week that police said also ensnared another man, 29-year-old Harry Palmore. He was arrested inside an apartment at the Carriage House complex, 10151 Curran Blvd., at about the same time as the man’s death.

Police Superintendent Michael Harrison said Tuesday night that officers were conducting surveillance on Palmore and the other man when the two began to run. At some point a plainclothes officer, who has not been named, shot and killed the other man.

Detectives this week began investigating a series of armed robberies linked to a silver Nissan Altima, according to an arrest report for Palmore.

Police said a man struck a woman with the butt of a gun in the 4000 block of North Rampart Street about 9 a.m. Friday, then stole her purse before hopping into a silver Altima. Then, on Monday morning, a man got out of a similar car in the 6300 block of Perrier Street, near Audubon Park, and forced a woman to hand over her purse.

Finally, a partially blind man walking with a cane in the 3900 block of Iberville Street was confronted Tuesday morning by a man who had just gotten out of a Nissan. But the blind man swung at the robber with his cane, forcing him to stumble and flee, police said.

Detectives said that while the victim’s vision in that case was limited, what description he did give matched the perpetrator in the other two incidents. The attempted armed robbery on Iberville Street was also caught on surveillance video, according to the arrest report.

Later in the day, the NOPD’s TIGER team — which was created last year to hunt armed robbery suspects — descended on the Carriage House apartments. Police said they found the Altima there. Two men told officers that the car belonged to a “Harry,” who lived in an apartment on the second floor in an interior courtyard, according to an arrest report.

Harrison, the police superintendent, said that two officers in plainclothes began to surveil the apartment, with additional, uniformed officers creating a cordon just beyond the courtyard. Perhaps spotting the officers, both Palmore and the other man began to run.

One resident, who declined to give her name, said that she watched from her apartment as the other man raced around the interior courtyard, with police in pursuit.